This invention relates generally to turbine engines, and more particularly to rotor blades used with turbine engines.
At least some known gas turbine engines include a compressor, a combustor, and at least one turbine. The compressor compresses air that is thereafter channeled to the combustor, wherein it is mixed with a fuel and ignited to generate combustion gases. The combustion gases are channeled to the turbine, which extracts energy from the combustion gases to drive the compressor. The combustion gases also produce useful work to propel an aircraft in flight or to power a load, for example an electrical generator.
Some known turbines include a rotor assembly and a stator assembly. Known rotor assemblies include a plurality of rotor blades extending radially outward from a disk. More specifically, each rotor blade extends radially between a platform, adjacent the disk, and a blade tip. A flow of combustion gases through the rotor assembly is bound radially inward by the rotor blade platforms, and radially outward by a shroud extending from each blade tip, sometimes referred to as a tip shroud. At least some known tip shrouds may have a weight that may cause the rotor assembly to resonate at a different frequency than other components of the engine, for example the stator assembly. Over time, continued engine operation with such frequency differences may cause damage to, and/or failure of, the rotor assembly and/or other components of the engine.